


How (Not) to Make Friends

by Riona



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gay Chicken, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 11:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19250140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: For someone who doesn't much like people, Dr Cox seems to have weirdly intimate moments with a lot of them.





	How (Not) to Make Friends

“There’s a new batch of interns coming in,” Carla says. “And, unlike most of the hospital, they don’t know enough about you to hate you yet. You could make some friends.”

“Interns, Carla,” Dr Cox says, “are not friends. Interns are food.”

“Just try being nice. You don’t have to scare them.”

“Why are you trying to rob me of my _very_ few shreds of job satisfaction?”

“Because,” Carla says, leaning forward and resting her arms on the counter of the nurses’ station, “I’m the only person you really talk to at this hospital right now, and if you keep using me as your personal therapist I’m gonna have to start charging.”

Dr Cox folds his arms. “Fine. I’ll just fire my actual shrink to free up the cash.”

“You could at least try to learn their names this time.”

“Are you kidding? It took me six months to learn yours, and I can guarantee you it’ll get pushed right back out of my head – _fweet_ – if I start trying to learn the name of every infant who crawls through that door in a pair of scrubs tomorrow. You want to go back to being Nurse-Who-Actually-Has-a-Brain?”

Carla shrugs. “Can’t say it’s the worst thing I’ve been called.”

“I’m not going to play nice with the interns,” Dr Cox says. “I am genetically incapable of doing that. I was actually presented as a case study at a medical conference.”

“Oh, that’s right, I’ve heard of that condition,” Carla says. “I think it’s called assholitis.”

Dr Cox nods solemnly. “Totally incurable. I’ve learned to live with it. Unless the new batch is full of masochists, they’re going to end up hating me just as much as everyone else who’s been through the newbie mill.”

Carla shakes her head. “Fingers crossed for some masochists, then. Maybe _you_ could try not to hate _them_. That’d be something.”

“I’m going to hate them, Carla. They’re interns.”

He pauses.

“But,” he says, “if by some miracle I meet someone I _don’t_ one hundred percent loathe, I will at least make some marginal effort not to deliberately sabotage their opinion of me.”

“That’s all I’m asking.” She leans across the counter and kisses him on the cheek.

Dr Cox does not get butterflies. Dr Cox is no longer a teenage boy. He has, in fact, put as much distance as possible between himself and his teenage years. When he became a man, he didn’t just put away childish things; he threw them onto a bonfire and watched them burn to ashes. Apart from temper tantrums, which just caught fire and kept burning, and so they’re still a part of his adult personality, only now they’re on fire.

The point is, he must be getting sick, because that feeling in his gut right now _categorically_ cannot be butterflies.

-

They’re kissing, and they’re kissing again, Dr Cox pressing Ben down into the hospital sheets, and at last Dr Cox pulls back a little, laughing. “So, what, do we call that a draw?”

“Ah, yes,” Ben says. “Kissing. The legendary finish line of Gay Chicken. Famously the most intimate thing two men can do.”

Dr Cox raises his eyebrows. “Okay, so what do you want from me?”

“I just want to see a little more of your competitive spirit.”

“Well, I’d love to show you, but I’ve been told to keep my competitive spirit in my pants during work hours.”

“Hey,” Ben says, raising his hands, “I’m not complaining if you want to give up. Means more points for me.”

Dr Cox narrows his eyes. “No one said anything about _giving up_.”

“Great,” Ben says, moving his hand to cup Dr Cox’s ass; Dr Cox manages not to react too sharply. “You know, I brought condoms and lube in case this goes any further. Your size. No one has to go in anywhere dry.”

Wait. _What?_

“Question one,” Dr Cox says, sitting back on his heels. “Are you _actually_ gay? Because your sexuality doesn’t make a difference to our friendship, but it’ll make a hell of a difference if it turns out you’ve been _cheating at Gay Chicken_ this entire time.”

“You can’t trust my answer,” Ben says. “I might just say ‘yes’ as a brilliant strategy to make you break faster when we’re playing.”

Maybe Carla’s right. Maybe he _does_ need more friends. He’d hate to break ties with Ben, but he’s a competitive man and Gay Chicken is serious business.

“Question two,” Dr Cox says. “ _How_ do you know my size?”

Ben shrugs against the bedsheets. “I asked my sister.”

Okay, wow. Dr Cox never wants to know the details of _that_ conversation, which, of course, means that Jordan is probably going to give him a full re-enactment the next time she shows up at his apartment.

“What’s she like in bed, by the way?” Ben asks.

Dr Cox stares at him. “Your _sister?_ ”

“C’mon, you’ve got to tell me,” Ben says. “It’s the only way I can get in the mood.”

Goddammit. Dr Cox climbs off him. Yet another for Ben’s side of the scoreboard.

-

Surprise, surprise: the new batch of interns has given him some masochists after all. Between Newbie and Barbie, he’s got yapping little puppies at his heels wherever he turns, and he just doesn’t seem able to scare them away. Why do they need his attention _all the time?_

Sometimes, he’ll admit, they actually do manage to make him take notice. To take one example, oh...

“I just needed to apologise for—”

“Barbie—”

“—for flashing you, I’m so embarrassed, I—”

“Barbie,” Dr Cox says, “I appreciate the concern, but seeing a pair of breasts was not, in fact, the low point of my day. Well, it happened to _coincide_ with the low point of my day, but I’m pretty sure that’s more to do with the just-lost-a-patient thing than the number of nipples in the room.”

There’s a pause.

“I have to ask, though—”

“No,” Barbie says, “you really don’t. It was a mistake, I’m sorry, let’s _please_ just leave it at that.”

“You sure? Because that means I’m going to have to draw my own conclusions, and, because I make it a policy not to think about any of the interns in this place for a moment longer than I have to, that means the historical record is going to stand on whatever reason I come up with in the next three seconds.” He snaps his fingers. “You wanted this fine piece of ass so bad you just _had_ to have me right there, on top of a corpse, in front of two doctors and a nurse. Sorry I couldn’t give it to you back then, Barbie, but I’ve got a strict policy of only having my public sex on top of dead _women_.”

Barbie stares at him. There’s a kind of power Dr Cox has always enjoyed in knowing exactly what images are going through a person’s head, and that you _put_ them there.

Honestly, the images are kind of sticking with him as well. He could do without the dead guy, but the ‘in front of two doctors and a nurse’ thing—

“Okay,” Barbie says. “Um. It – it wasn’t that. I’d just – I’d, um, I’d shown them to a few patients, and it seemed to lead to, um, improvements, so I thought – I thought—” Her voice is somehow dwindling rapidly while managing to remain exactly as grating as usual. It’s remarkable, really. “I thought maybe they had some kind of power.”

Dr Cox looks at her for a moment. “So it was for the _patient’s_ benefit.”

She shrugs helplessly. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it, there, Barbie. Breasts _do_ have a certain mysterious power – mainly, let’s be honest, hypnotic – and it’s not like you’re the first person here to flash a corpse. I’ve seen plenty of competent, sane doctors get tripped up by the ‘maybe my boobs are magic’ thing.”

“Really?” Barbie asks, with a worrying degree of genuine hope.

“N... no,” Dr Cox says. “No. Of course not. What? No.”

Barbie looks down, biting her lip, her hair falling over her face.

She is right to feel ridiculous, and Dr Cox has absolutely no reason to try to make her feel better.

“Hey,” Dr Cox says, “if he had a last moment of awareness, at least he died happy.” He shrugs. “And at times like that, I can’t complain about being given something else to focus on.”

Barbie pauses. “That’s... sweet?”

“It’s the best you’re getting from me,” Dr Cox says. “Maybe don’t get the girls out for the patients any more. Ted’ll pass out if he hears about it.”

-

“Tell me what you did to her.”

Newbie starts in terror when he realises Dr Cox is in the room with him. As he should. “Uh, what I did to...?”

“My ex-wife, Newbie,” Dr Cox says. “You _know_ I mean my ex-wife. I already know what you did to the patient who used to be in here: you misdiagnosed her, and I don’t need you to tell me about _that_ when I already know for a fact you’re going to demonstrate it six more times in the next week.”

Newbie shifts, looking very uncomfortable. Good. “I swear I didn’t know she was your ex.”

“I swear I don’t care.”

“I thought she was just a patient. I mean, and a member of the board.”

“Making this a thrilling violation of ethics in both directions,” Dr Cox says. “I don’t care if you thought she was a flying squirrel. What did you do?”

Newbie hesitates. “I’m, uh, not sure what you want from me. I thought Ms Sullivan made it pretty... clear.”

“That she slept with you?” Dr Cox asks, baring his teeth in a grin. This whole situation is simultaneously unbelievable and so _entirely_ believable he almost can’t believe he didn’t suspect it earlier. “Well, gosh, that could mean anything. Maybe you were having a sleepover in your adorable pyjamas and braiding your My Little Ponies. Maybe she was pegging you with a kitchen knife. Maybe, God forbid, you made the mistake of trying to _penetrate_ her, and any equipment you might have had down there just got bitten clean off by the venomous snake that she calls her vagina. I just won’t know unless you tell me.”

Newbie gets a look that Dr Cox knows all too well. He is absolutely not allowed to daydream about this. Dr Cox whistles him back to reality.

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable talking about this,” Newbie says.

“Oh, well, God knows I wouldn’t want to make you _uncomfortable_. Tell me what you did to her. I’m gonna keep asking until I run out of words, which you already know I use up at a _phenomenal_ rate, at which point I’ll just go ahead and shift to communicating my point by repeatedly kneeing you in the crotch.”

Newbie shuffles his feet. “It’s... you know, it’s really more a question of what _she_ did to _me_.”

Well, _that_ manages to do something to Dr Cox that his therapist probably doesn’t need to hear about.

“I mean—” Newbie says. “I mean, I don’t want you getting the wrong idea, I’m normally _totally_ proactive in bed. She’s just – she, uh – she’s very forceful.”

Dr Cox raises his eyebrows. “It unsettles me that you want me to have a particular image of what you’re like in bed.”

Probably hypocritical of him to say that when he’s demanding a blow-by-blow account of the Jordan incident. Fortunately, Newbie doesn’t seem to pick up on it; he’s busy alternating between avoiding Dr Cox’s eyes and staring unblinkingly at him, probably watching for murder attempts.

“So let me guess,” Dr Cox says, swiping his nose and folding his arms. “I’m gonna say it was right here in the hospital.” He can’t see any reason they’d be paying home visits to each other, unless Jordan’s _so_ dedicated to screwing with Dr Cox that she actively tracked down the intern he’d least want her to fuck.

(The question of _why_ the fact that it’s Newbie specifically bothers him so much is one to be contemplated another day, or ideally never.)

“You wander into her room, just another normal day of being a terrible doctor, and suddenly you’re the helpless intern fly caught in her web. She probably says _pants off, Newbie_ , or whatever she calls you, and you just go right ahead and – dear God, Newbie, _what_ the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t know!” Newbie says shrilly, scrambling to yank his pants back up. “I don’t know how either of you do this! It’s like you have mind control powers!”

-

“You’re not _in love with me_ ,” Carla says. “You just got confused because I was your only friend at the hospital. Now that there are actually other people you can stand, you’ll soon figure out I’m right.”

Dr Cox glances down the corridor. Newbie and Barbie are squabbling over something no doubt stupid and trivial. She knocks the files out of his hands. He yells extremely mild insults after her as she stalks off down the corridor. The sight, to his disgust, makes him feel almost fond.

“Maybe I’ll just fall in love with them as well,” Dr Cox says. “Didn’t think of that, didja?”


End file.
